now here

They are to be admired those survivors
of solitude who have gone with no maps
into the room without features,
where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,
no path of danger to a cold summit
to look back on and feel exuberant,
no clarity of territories yet untouched
that tremble near the human breath,
no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores
to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,
no friendship of other explorers
drawn into the dream of the unknown.


No. They do not belong to the outside worship
of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior
space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,
where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human
and a poultice of silence pulls every sound
out of circulation down into the ground,
where in the panic of being each breath unravels
an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,
shawls of thought fall off, empty and lost,
where only the red scream of the blood continues unheard
without anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring
is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere.





John O'Donohue
Echoes of Memory
Photo: Peter Bowers

the tree

The tree rises from the  dark.

It circles around the "heart of darkness" from which it reaches towards the light.

A tree is a perfect presence.

It is somehow able to engage and integrate its own dissolution.

The tree is wise in knowing how to foster its own loss.

It does not become haunted by the loss nor addicted to it.

The tree shelters and minds the loss.

Out of this comes the quiet dignity and poise of a tree's presence.

Trees stand beautifully on the clay.

They stand with dignity.

A  life that wishes to honour its own possibility
has to learn too how to integrate the suffering
 of dark and bleak times
into a dignity of presence.

Letting go of old forms of life, a tree practices
hospitality towards new forms of life.

It balances the perennial energies of winter and spring
within its own living bark.

The tree is wise in the art of belonging.

...

The tree can reach towards the light,
endure wind, rain, and storm,
precisely because it is rooted.

Each of its branches is ultimately anchored in a reliable depth of clay.

The wisdom of the tree balances the path inwards with the pathway outwards.





John O'Donohue
Eternal Echoes
Photo:  Peter Bowers

To Come Home to Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you
Be released.

May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unlived in you
Blossom into a future
Graced with love.





John O'Donohue
Photo:  Peter Bowers

the ancient womb

The world rests in the night.

Trees, mountains, fields, and faces

 are released from the prison of shape 

and the burden of exposure.

Each thing creeps back into its own nature 

within  the shelter of the dark.

Darkness is the ancient womb.

 Nighttime is womb-time.  Our souls come out to play.

The darkness absolves everything; 

the struggle for identity and impression falls away.

We rest in the night.

John O'Donohue

Anam Cara

Photo:  Peter Bowers

thanks giving

Wonder, as the child of mystery, is a natural source of prayer.
One of the most beautiful forms of prayer is the prayer of appreciation.  This prayer arises out of the recognition of the gracious kindness of creation.  We have been given so much.  We could never have merited or earned it.  When you appreciate all you are and all you have, you can celebrate and enjoy it.  You realize how fortunate you are.  Providence is blessing you and inviting you to be generous with your gifts.  You are able to bless life and give thanks to God.  The prayer of appreciation has no agenda but gracious thanks.  Nothing is given to you for yourself alone.  When you receive some blessing or gift, you do it in the name of others; through you, they, too, will come to share in the kindness of Providence.




John O'Donohue
from Eternal Echoes
Photo: Peter Morgan

We Are Here

It is a strange and magical fact to be here,

walking around in a body,

to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you.

It is an immense privilege,

and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here …

It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us

so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed.

We are here.

We are wildly and dangerously free.

John O'Donohue

From Anam Cara

image:  Peter Bowers

For Longing

Blessed be the longing that brought you here

And quickens your soul with wonder

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire

That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease

To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging - in love, creativity, and friendship -  

Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you.

May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness 

with which your body inhabits the world.  

May your heart never be haunted by ghost structures

of old damage.

May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.  

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcomes the wonder of this day,

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the alter of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath,

The tent of thought where I shelter,

Waves of desire I am shore to 

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invites me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

For The Senses

May the touch of your skin

Register the beauty

Of the otherness

That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned

To the deeper silence

Where sound is honed

To bring distance home.

May the fragrance

Of a breathing meadow

Refresh your heart

And remind you you are

A child of the earth

And when you partake 

Of food and drink, 

May your taste quicken 

To the gift and sweetness

That flows from the earth.

May your inner eye

See through the surfaces

And glean the real presence

Of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify

The desire of your eyes

That you might glimpse

The infinity that hides

In the simple sights

That seem worn

To your usual eyes.  

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

For the Traveler

Every time you leave home, 

Another road takes you

Into a world you were never in. 

New strangers on other paths await.

New places that have never seen you

Will startle a little at your entry.

Old places that know you well

Will pretend nothing

Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself

Alone in a different way,

More attentive now

To the self you bring along,

Your more subtle eye watching

You abroad; and how what meets you

Touches that part of the heart

That lies low at home: 

How you unexpectedly attune

To the timbre in some voice,

Opening a conversation

You want to take in

To where your longing

Has pressed hard enough

Inward, on some unsaid dark,

To create a crystal of insight

You could not have known

You needed

To illuminate

Your way.

When you travel, 

A new silence

Goes with you,

And if you listen,

 You will hear 

What your heart would 

Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:

Make sure, before you go,

To take the time

To bless your going forth, 

To free your heart of ballast

So that the compass of your soul

Might direct you toward

The territories of spirit

Where you will discover

More of your hidden life,

And the urgencies

That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way, 

Gathered wisely into your inner ground; 

That you may not waste the invitations

Which wait along the way to transform you. 

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed, 

And live your time away to its fullest; 

Return home more enriched, and free

To balance the gift of days which call you. 

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

for your birthday

On this echoing-day of your birth,

May you open the gift of solitude

In order to receive your soul;

Enter the generosity of silence

To hear your hidden heart;

Know the serenity of stillness

To be enfolded anew

By the miracle of your being.

John O'Donohue

The Inner History of a Day

No one knew the name of this day;

Born quietly from deepest night,

It hid its face in light,

Demanded nothing for itself,

Opened out to offer each of us

A field of brightness that traveled ahead,

Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps

And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws not attention;

It dwells within the silence with elegance

To create a space for all our words,

Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place

Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,

Transforming our broken fragments

Into an eternal continuity that keeps us. 

Somewhere in us a dignity presides

That is more gracious than the smallness

That fuels us with fear and force,

A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks

For being betrothed to the unknown

And for the secret work

Through which the mind of the day

And wisdom of the soul become one.

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

On Waking

I give thanks for arriving 

Safely in a new dawn,

For the gift of eyes

To see the world,

The gift of mind

To feel at home

In my life.

The waves of possibility

Breaking on the shore of dawn,

The harvest of the past

That awaits my hunger,

And all the furtherings

This new day will bring.

John O'Donohue 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

For Freedom

As a bird soars high

In the free holding of the wind,

Clear of the certainty of ground,

Opening the imagination of wings

Into the grace of emptiness

To fulfill new voyagings,

May your life awaken

To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself

Of the expectation of land,

Approaching only

In the form of waves

That fill and pleat and fall

With such gradual elegance

As to make of the limit

A sonorous threshold

Whose music echoes back along

The give and strain of memory,

Thus may your heart know the patience

That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth

Welcomes all we call death,

Taking deep into itself

The tight solitude of a seed, 

Allowing it time

To shed the grip of former form

And to give way to a deeper generosity

That will one day send it forth,

A tree into springtime,

May all that holds you

Fall from its hungry ledge

Into the fecund surge of your heart. 

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

For Absence

May you know that absence is alive with hidden

presence, that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.

May the absences in your life grow full of eternal 

echo.

May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere

where the presences that have left you dwell.

May you be generous in your embrace of loss.

May the sore well of grief turn into a seamless flow

of presence.

May your compassion reach out to the ones we never 

hear from.

May you have the courage to speak for the excluded

ones.

May you become the gracious and passionate subject

of your own life.

May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle

words or false belonging.  

May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and

twilight are one. 

May your longing inhabit its dreams within the 

Great Belonging.

John O'Donohue 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

It is a strange and magical fact...

It is a strange and magical fact to be here,

walking around in a body,

to have a whole world within you

and a world at your fingertips outside you.

It is an immense privilege,

and it is incredible that humans 

manage to forget the miracle of being here...

It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us

so that the mystical wonder of 

our lives goes totally unnoticed.

We are here.

We are wildly and dangerously free.

John O'Donohue

Anam Cara 

To Come Home to Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you

Be released.

May your fears yield

Their deepest tranquillities.

May all that is unlived in you

Blossom into a future

Graced with love. 

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

A Blessing For The New Year

Beannacht

 

 

 

On the day when

The weight deadens

On your shoulders

And you stumble,

May the clay dance

To balance you.

And when your eyes

Freeze behind

The gray window

And the ghost of loss

Gets into you,

May a flock of colours,

Indigo, red, green

And azure blue,

Come to awaken in you

A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

In the curragh of thought

And a stain of ocean

Blackens beneath you,

May there come across the waters

A path of yellow moonlight

To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,

May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

Wind work these words

Of love around you,

An invisible cloak

To mind your life.

John O`Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

At The End Of The Year

The particular mind of the ocean

Filling the coastline's longing

With such brief harvest

Of elegant, vanishing waves

Is like the mind of time

Opening us shapes of days.

As this year draws to its end,

We give thanks for the gifts it brought

And how they became inlaid within

Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted

And the soul could see delight;

When a quiver caressed the heart

In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake

In forgotten corners of old fields

Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times

When all was awkward

And the wave in the mind

Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped

The confidence of the dawn

Days when beloved faces shone brighter

With light from beyond themselves;

And from the granite of some secret sorrow

A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,

For all we loved and lost

And for the quiet way it brought us

Nearer to our invisible destination.

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

For Light

Light cannot see inside things.

That is what the dark is for:

Minding the interior,

Nurturing the draw of growth

Through places where death

In its own way turns into life.

In the glare of neon times,

Let our eyes not be worn

By surfaces that shine

With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light,

Finding their way into words

Which have the weight of shadow

To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust

In minds claimed by empty light,

Where one-sided certainties

Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,

May our eyes have the kindness

And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds

Be equal to the oblique

Crevices and corners where

The mystery continues to dwell,

glimmering in fugitive light.

When we are confined inside

The dark house of suffering

That moonlight might find a window

When we become false and lost

That the severe noon-light

Would cast our shadow clear.

When we love, that dawn-light

Would lighten our feet

Upon the waters.

As we grow old, that twilight

Would illuminate treasure

In the fields of memory.

And when we come to search for God,

Let us first be robed in night,

Put on the mind of morning

To feel the rush of light

Spread slowly inside

The colour and stillness

Of a found world.

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers